My own belief, then, was, and it still remains the same, that the violence of the young man's disease, especially the tendency to the brain, was chiefly, if not wholly, owing to the medicine administered; and that, from the very first, no active medicine—nothing but an exceedingly mild and cooling treatment—was required. It was even my belief that the ulcer was caused by the medicine.
But, while I lost confidence in human nature, and especially in the human nature of some of my brethren of the medical profession, by this experiment, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever before of the great need of honest and benevolent as well as scientific men in this department, and of the general impotency and worse than impotency of much that is dignified with the name of medical treatment. I became most fully convinced, that in acute diseases as well as chronic, Nature, unembarrassed, will generally accomplish her own work, when left to herself and to good and careful nursing and attendance.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED.
One of my neighbors had fallen down-stairs, and injured himself internally, in the right side of the chest; and a degree, greater or less, of inflammation had followed. The pain was constant, though not severe; but the soreness was considerable, and did not give promise of speedy amendment.
My advice was to keep quiet, both in body and mind, and to avoid all kinds of exertion that could possibly affect the chest. I also advised the use of water, not only for drink, in small draughts, but, if the pain and soreness should be troublesome, as an external application to the part affected. The food was to be mild and unstimulating. A tendency to crowd around the fire was to be guarded against and prevented, by putting on, if necessary, an increased amount of clothing.
Two days passed away with no great variation of the symptoms, either for better or worse. I was now fully convinced that I had taken the true course, because, otherwise, my patient must, by this time, have become worse. Accordingly, I persevered in my general let-alone plan for about two weeks, when the patient fully recovered.
He was a slender boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, strongly inclined, by inheritance, to disease of the chest and brain; and this consideration, among others, led me to be extremely cautious about his treatment. The greater the danger the greater the necessity that what is done should be done right, or we shall defeat our own purposes.